Progress Report: May 2021

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An exciting month for the mod!

RELEASE SUMMARY

Last week saw to the release of The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise cutscene alongside a few other bug fixes and improvements. Thankfully the release appears to have been smooth and did not require a hotfix to correct any bugs accidentally left in. However, we did release a small hotfix to address some collision issues with Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker's model and a better face texture for Chancellor Palpatine.

FORCE POWERS

As promised, our next update will see to the release of brand new Force Powers. This month we have been hard at work addressing Force Blast and Force Destruction, which were functionally identical to each other, negating the unique factor that each force power contains.

Over Memorial Day weekend, multiple code changes have been made to both powers to make them more unique, which I will describe now.

FORCE BLAST

Force Blast is intended as the Light Side's only truly offensive force power, capable of causing damage to enemies. Upon activation, Blast will create an explosion off of any solid surface or enemy, causing damage in a finite area. Though the damage output is relatively low, the tradeoff is that the power can be cast through fairly small areas, giving you the ability to catch your enemies off guard.

As Force Blast is an instantaneous power, NPCs cannot push back the projectile so it is a guaranteed hit. However, Force Absorb can lessen or even nullify the impact of the power.

FORCE DESTRUCTION

Making its initial debut in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Force Destruction has been designed to be the most powerful Force ability in the game, but also the most dangerous. Initially, Force Destruction had a set force point cost and set damage output. With the code refactor, Destruction has been completely reworked.

Force Destruction can be fired at any amount of available force points you have in your arsenal. Draining the entirety of your force pool, Destruction's damage will be equal to the amount of Force Points you have available, multiplied by the power's level. For example:

- If you fire Force Destruction with 300 force points, the damage output on a direct hit will be 300hp of damage, multiplied by the current level of Destruction, with an overall maximum possible damage output of 900hp. Surrounding enemies will be struck with the same amount of damage. Additionally, any enemy killed by the power has a 33% chance of being vaporized. This does not affect damage output and is strictly a cosmetic feature.

- If you fire Force Destruction with 1 force point, the damage output will be 1hp of damage, multiplied by the current level of Destruction, with an overall maximum possible damage output of 3hp.

Destruction has the potential to be highly damaging, but it does not come without risk. Force Sensitive NPCs can still push back the power at you, and Force Absorb can only mitigate up to 60% of incoming damage. The power's potential to be an instant kill required the ability for the player and NPCs to defend themselves.

NPC BEHAVIOR

These Force Powers will be applied to the NPCs where applicable. However you may be thinking that any NPC with these powers will be severely OP. We have already thought of this potential issue and have already taken steps to mitigate the effects from NPCs:

- The damage output of Force Destruction, Force Blast, and Lightning Strike will heavily scaled back and will be entirely dependent on the game's set difficulty. The easier the game mode, the less damage the powers will cause.

- The player will be completely immune to Force Fear at any given time.

- Force Grasp causes no damage and can be force pushed out of.

- The player only has a 33% chance of being affected by Force Stasis. If the player has Absorb activated, the chance is reduced to 0%

COMMUNITY FEEDBACK

A little over a week ago, we have put together a new Google Form to get our community's opinion as to which direction the mod should go. As of writing this report, we have received 84 responses. I know we can do better, and would like to try and get as many responses as possible. Later this month, I will show off the results.

Please consider filling out our form if you haven't done so already: https://forms.gle/NJcKBrMjeJFstedN8

Thank you for following the development of Star Wars: Galactic Legacy, and may the Force be with you.